I wasn't going to comment on Mathahir Mohamad's assertion last week that
"Jews Rule this World by Proxy," although I did post the report of
his speech as a Recommended Reading. And I did say the speech should be taken
seriously, because it did represent the views of the Islamic world, not just
Mahathir. Now President Bush, who does not read newspapers but gets the news
conveyed to him by Condi Rice, bumped into the Malaysian Prime Minister at a
gathering in Bangkok. He took the opportunity to tell Mahathir how outraged he
was at this anti-Semitism and then issued a press release trumpeting news of
this private conversation. Then Tuesday, Paul Krugman of the New York Times
devoted his column to an explanation of why Mahathir did what he did, and why
he thinks President Bush does not understand how he and his administration
have brought America's relations with the 1.3 billion Muslims to this pretty
pass. In today's Times there are several letters to the editor
denouncing Krugman for being an apologist for an anti-Semite.

The complete transcript of Mahathir's speech can be found at this link. Here
are excerpts as reported by AP:

October 21, 2003

Views on Jews By Malaysian: His Own Words
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Following are excerpts from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's speech on
Thursday at the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia:

We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our
defense. But because we are discouraged from learning of science and
mathematics as giving us no merit for the afterlife, today we have no capacity
to produce our own weapons for our defense. We have to buy our weapons from
our detractors and enemies. . . .

Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think
properly. And so we find some of our people acting irrationally. They launch
their own attacks, killing just about everybody, including fellow Muslims, to
vent their anger and frustration. . . .

There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their
people. . . . But is it true that we should do and can do nothing for
ourselves? Is it true that 1.3 billion people can exert no power to save
themselves from the humiliation and oppression inflicted on them by a much
smaller enemy? Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow
themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own
people? . . .

We are actually very strong; 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out.
The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule
the world by proxy: They get others to fight and die for them. . . .

We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. . . . Even among the
Jews, there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing. . . .

We are up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not
by hitting back but by thinking. They invented socialism, communism, human
rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so
that they can enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained
control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have
become a world power. . . .

Of late, because of their power and their apparent success, they have become
arrogant. And arrogant people, like angry people, will make mistakes, will
forget to think. They are already beginning to make mistakes. There may be
windows of opportunities for us now and in the future. We must seize these
opportunities.

* * * * *

I'll append Krugman's column, but also recommend you read a
Mahathir speech he gave last year, which got no attention, but which may at
least persuade you that Krugman has a point that should not be dismissed out
of hand. I have been privately responding to Jewish clients on this issue by
pointing out that a political leader knows how to get in front of an angry mob
that is moving in the wrong direction. He gets its attention by first telling
it that it has every right to be angry. He can only then hope to move it by
degrees in a more constructive direction, away from its violent path. Read the
speech and you will see that is what Mahathir is doing and why the response
from the leaders of the Islamic world was so enthusiastic. There is no
anti-Semitism here. Anti-Semitism requires that you wish to do harm to Jews in
some way or another and Mahathir is clearly stating the opposite goal, urging
his fellow Muslims to instead think through strategies that will bring about
peaceful solutions to the issues that confront the Islamic world.

Listening to Mahathir
By Paul KrugmanNYTimes Oct. 21, 2003

"The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the
Jews rule this world by proxy: They get others to fight and die for
them." So said Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, at an
Islamic summit meeting last week. The White House promptly denounced his
"hate-filled remarks."

Indeed, those remarks were inexcusable. But they were also calculated -- for
Mr. Mahathir is a cagey politician, who is neither ignorant nor foolish. And
to understand why he made those remarks is to realize how badly things are
going for U.S. foreign policy.

The fact is that Mr. Mahathir, though guilty of serious abuses of power, is in
many ways about as forward-looking a Muslim leader as we're likely to find.
And Malaysia is the kind of success story we wish we saw more of: an
impressive record of economic growth, rising education levels and general
modernization in a nation with a Muslim majority.

It's worth reading the rest of last week's speech, beyond the offensive 28
words. Most of it is criticism directed at other Muslims, clerics in
particular. Mr. Mahathir castigates "interpreters of Islam who taught
that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic
theology." Thanks to these interpreters, "the study of science,
medicine, etc. was discouraged. Intellectually the Muslims began to
regress." A lot of the speech sounds as if it had been written by Bernard
Lewis, author of "What Went Wrong," the best-selling book about the
Islamic decline.

So what's with the anti-Semitism? Almost surely it's part of Mr. Mahathir's
domestic balancing act, something I learned about the last time he talked like
this, during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.

At that time, rather than accept the austerity programs recommended by the
U.S. government and the I.M.F., he loudly blamed machinations by Western
speculators, and imposed temporary controls on the outflow of capital -- a
step denounced by all but a handful of Western economists. As it turned out,
his economic strategy was right: Malaysia suffered a shallower slump and
achieved a quicker recovery than its neighbors.

What became clear watching Mr. Mahathir back then was that his strident
rhetoric was actually part of a delicate balancing act aimed at domestic
politics. Malaysia has a Muslim, ethnically Malay, majority, but its business
drive comes mainly from an ethnic Chinese minority. To keep the economy
growing, Mr. Mahathir must allow the Chinese minority to prosper, but to ward
off ethnic tensions he must throw favors, real and rhetorical, to the Malays.

Part of that balancing act involves reserving good jobs for Malay workers and
giving special business opportunities to Malay entrepreneurs. One reason Mr.
Mahathir was so adamantly against I.M.F. austerity plans was that he feared
that they would disrupt the carefully managed cronyism that holds his system
together. When times are tough, Mr. Mahathir also throws the Muslim majority
rhetorical red meat.

And that's what he was doing last week. Not long ago Washington was talking
about Malaysia as an important partner in the war on terror. Now Mr. Mahathir
thinks that to cover his domestic flank, he must insert hateful words into a
speech mainly about Muslim reform. That tells you, more accurately than any
poll, just how strong the rising tide of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism
among Muslims in Southeast Asia has become. Thanks to its war in Iraq and its
unconditional support for Ariel Sharon, Washington has squandered post-9/11
sympathy and brought relations with the Muslim world to a new low.

And bear in mind that Mr. Mahathir's remarks were written before the world
learned about the views of Lt. Gen. William "My God Is Bigger Than
Yours" Boykin. By making it clear that he sees nothing wrong with giving
an important post in the war on terror to someone who believes, and says
openly, that Allah is a false idol. General Boykin denies that's what he
meant, but his denial was implausible even by current standards. Donald
Rumsfeld has gone a long way toward confirming the Muslim world's worst fears.

Somewhere in Pakistan Osama bin Laden must be enjoying this. The war on terror
didn't have to be perceived as a war on Islam, but we seem to be doing our
best to make it look that way.